love and disguise in war and peace - book 2

folk art painting of a troika ride - hanging in my sister Stephanie's home

One of the things Tolstoy explores so beautifully in Book 2 of War and Peace, is the theme of love and disguise.  While some characters disguise their true feelings for financial or sexual advantage, others disguise themselves in costumes, which reveal hidden aspects of their personalities.  Then there is Natasha Rostov, who disguises nothing.  Natasha feels everything fully, for the world to see.  There is no disguise about her and that's what makes her so alive. But Natasha undergoes the biggest change in this portion of the book - from early blossom to the first signs of blight.  We also experience two sharply contrasting troika rides - one exemplifying innocence, the other moral corruption.

Natasha is bored and listless at home. She has been daydreaming about her fiance Prince Andrei and she's impatient for him to come back.  Then Tolstoy beautifully gives us Natasha's relationship with her cousin Sonya and brother Nikolai, sitting in the corner for one of their intimate conversations.  Nikolai and Natasha recall their childhood exploits.  "And do you remember," Natasha asks, "how we rolled hard-boiled eggs in the ballroom, and all of a sudden two little old women appeared and began spinning round on the carpet? Was that real or not? Do you remember what fun it was?"

Soon after this,  a party of mummers enters the ballroom in their costumes and entertains the family, and then some of the Rostovs dress up in costumes of their own, made out of dressing gowns and sashes, and go on a wonderful troika ride, to surprise their friends at the Melyokov estate.

We don't see much of Natasha's costume - perhaps because nothing can really disguise her, so forthright is her nature.  But Nikolai dresses as an old lady in a farthingale, and Sonya, who is usually much quieter and often in her cousin's shadow,  has the best costume of all - with a mustache and eyebrows made of burnt cork. "Her moustaches and eyebrows were extraordinarily becoming to her," Tolstoy writes. "Everyone said how pretty she looked, and she was keyed up to an unusual pitch of energy and excitement."  

Their troika ride is so evocative in the moonlit snow, that you feel you are living through one of the most beautiful of their childhood memories. What could be more enchanting than Sonya and Nikolai dressed in their costumes sliding and squeaking across the snowy path for a stolen kiss? "He was different from the Nikolai she had known and always slightly feared.  He was in women's dress with tousled hair and a blissful smile new to Sonya."   As she runs towards him, "She's quite different and yet exactly the same, thought Nikolai, looking at her face all lit up by moonlight."

The adventure is more poignant for being the last truly innocent excursion for Natasha. She is about to be introduced to and corrupted by the pretensions of Moscow high society.

But Tolstoy breaks us in slowly - first giving us the self seeking Boris and plain, powdered Julie and their courtship.  Boris is a bit like Pierre was, when he didn't want to propose to Helene. But Julie is so rich that he must follow through, if he wants to get access to her estates.  You cannot feel too sorry for Julie, who "noticed Boris's hesitation and sometimes the thought occurred to her that he had an aversion for her; but her feminine vanity quickly restored her confidence and she would assure herself that it was merely love that made him bashful."

Next, Natasha is snubbed and humiliated by Prince Andrei's father and has an uncomfortable meeting with his sister Maria.  But worse is to come ....  with Pierre's wife Countess Bezahov and her indolent brother Anatole! They are both vulgar, shallow and hedonistic. But "Countess Bezahov had some right to her reputation of being a fascinating woman," Tolstoy tells us. "She could say what she did not think - flattery, especially with perfect simplicity and naturalness."
 
Natasha catches their eye at the opera.  I love how Tolstoy describes the performance in terms of its absurdity - utterly at face value, just as Natasha sees it.  This hints at her inability to see beyond pretense - she  simply cannot comprehend that people are not exactly as they appear to be.  "One extremely fat girl in a white silk dress was sitting apart on a low bench, to the back of which a piece of green cardboard was glued.  They were all singing something.  When they had finished their chorus the girl in white advanced towards the prompter's box and a man with stout legs encased in silk tights, a plume in his cap and a dagger at his waist, went up to her and began to sing and wave his arms about."

But while she is reading every thing at face value,  Natasha begins to  "pass into a state of intoxication she had not experienced for a long time."  She is agitated and stimulated all at once and Anatole steps right in.  He knows exactly how to exploit her sexual longings and flirt with her.   Natasha is uneasy, frightened, pleased and flattered  all at once.  But all her feelings are exactly themselves - conflicted and undisguised.  And since she feels everything strongly and never questions the veracity of her feelings, she falls completely under his influence.    Of course for him the seduction is a game. We then get his wickedly conceived troika ride - so different from the Rostovs earlier ride in their funny costumes.

The only other character who is less capable of insincerity than Natasha is the bumbling and foolish seeming Pierre.   But is he such a bumbler? He's the one who steps forward to protect Natasha.  It's no wonder that in their guilelessness these two,  Natasha and Pierre,  are the characters we love the most.

I'm up to page 721.  I'll check in later!